SophistiTIX presented by Buckingham Companies

About the Show

Spend an intimate evening with two of the most celebrated stars in jazz today: jazz vocalist and Grammy-winner Cécile McLorin Salvant and acclaimed pianist Sullivan Fortner. Salvant has been called “the finest jazz singer to emerge in the last decade” and sings with a soulful expression that inhabits the songs the way an actress embodies a character. With elegance, poise and boundless soul and sensuality, she is quickly becoming a leader of her generation by inspiring a new audience to discover the joy of jazz. Her most recent album, Dreams and Daggers, won the 2018 Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Fortner is an American jazz pianist, composer, and the 2015 winner of the American Pianists Association Cole Porter Fellowship in Jazz.

About Cécile Mclorin Salvant

Cécile McLorin Salvant was born and raised in Miami, Florida of a French mother and a Haitian father. She started classical piano studies at 5, and began singing in the Miami Choral Society at 8. Early on, she developed an interest in classical voice, began studying with private instructors, and later with Edward Walker, vocal teacher at the University of Miami.

In 2007, Cécile moved to Aix-en-Provence, France, to study law as well as classical and baroque voice at the Darius Milhaud Conservatory. It was in Aix-en-Provence, with reedist and teacher Jean-François Bonnel, that she started learning about jazz, and sang with her first band. In 2009, after a series of concerts in Paris, she recorded her first album “Cécile”, with Jean-François Bonnel’s Paris Quintet. A year later, she won the Thelonious Monk competition in Washington D.C.

Over the years, she has developed a curiosity for the history of American music, and the connections between jazz, vaudeville, blues, and folk music. Cécile carefully chooses her repertoire, oftentimes unearthing rarely recorded, forgotten songs, with strong stories. She enjoys popularity in Europe and in the United States, performing in clubs, concert halls, and festivals. In 2014, her second album, WomanChild (Mack Avenue Records) was nominated for a Grammy.

Her third album, For One To Love (for Mack Avenue Records), was recorded in 2015 with Aaron Diehl (piano), Paul Sikivie (bass), and Lawrence Leathers (drums). In 2016, For One To Love won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album.

Her fourth album, Dreams and Daggers, (for Mack Avenue Records), was recorded in part live at the Village Vanguard in 2016 with Aaron Diehl (piano), Paul Sikivie (bass), and Lawrence Leathers (drums), The Catalyst Quartet and Sullivan Fortner. In 2017, Dreams and Daggers was nominated for the 60th Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album.